The nation's leftists, whether in academia or the news media
tout themselves as advocates of free speech. Back in 1964, it was
Mario Savio a campus leftist who led the Free Speech Movement at the
Berkeley campus of the University of California, a movement that
without question played a vital role in placing American universities center stage in the flow of political ideas no matter how
controversial, unpatriotic and vulgar.

From the Nazis to the Stalinists leftists have always supported
free speech rights, at least initially. Why? Because speech is
important for the realization of leftist goals of command and
control. People must be propagandized, proselytized and convinced.
However, once the leftists are in power, as they are in most universities, free speech becomes a liability and must be suppressed.
This is increasingly the case on college campuses and even finds its
way into the work place.

West Virginia University's student handbook reads in part:
"Individuals or organizations may utilize designated free speech
areas on a first-come, first-served basis without making reservations." Adding, ". . .the two designated areas for free speech and
assembly will be the amphitheater area of the Mountainlair plaza and
the concrete stage area in front of the Mountainlair and adjacent to
the WVU Bookstore." In other words, 99 percent of West Virginia's
campus was made into a censorship zone.

This Nazi-Stalinist-like policy did not last long. The
Philadelphia-based Foundation for Individual Rights in Education
(FIRE) began a campaign of public exposure and the Charlottesville,
Virginia-based Rutherford Institute brought suit. This persuaded
West Virginia University's Board of Governors to promulgate a new
policy that abolishes censorship zones saying, "Assemblies of
persons may occur on any grounds on the campus outside of buildings." While censorship zones have been eliminated at West Virginia
University, they continue to exist at Appalachia State University,
Florida State University, Illinois State, the University of Texas,
Austin and the University of Houston and about 15 other universities
across the country.

According to a Washington Post (11/21/02), Harvard Law School
is considering a ban on offensive speech. Members of its Black Law
Students Association has called for what they call "a discriminatory
harassment policy that would basically punish or at least give the
administration some way to review harassing behavior." Harvard's
Committee on Healthy Diversity - made up of six faculty, six students and three law school staff members - will make its recommendations in the spring. It might be that Harvard's black law students,
like so many other students, have come to believe that they have a
constitutional right not to be offended or have their feelings hurt.

Universities that have been trying to quash free speech have
encountered some court reversals of their attempts. But campus
leftists have not given up. The newest university gambit to limit
speech mirrors the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission guidelines concerning sexual harassment in the workplace, (creating a
hostile environment) or they attempt to base their speech code on
the "fighting words" doctrine enunciated by the Court in Chaplinsky
v. New Hampshire (1942).

In addition to limitations on free speech, some universities
have communist style re-education practices. For example at the
University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill incoming freshmen were
required to read Approaching the Qur'an: The Early Revelations.
According to the school's Chancellor James Moeser, the book was
"chosen in the wake of September 11th," which was a "great opportunity to have a conversation on the teachings of one of the world's
great religions." Can one imagine the furor if there were mandatory
reading of books discussing Christianity?

At Vanderbilt University its Confederate Memorial Hall dormitory was renamed to Memorial Hall because the word "Confederate"
makes some people feel uncomfortable. Vanderbilt Professor Jonathan
Farley, in an article, said that Confederates were "cowards masquerading as civilized men" and that "every Confederate soldier deserved
not a hallowed resting place at the end of his days but a reservation at the end of the gallows." One can imagine the indignation if
such a statement were made about other combatants in U.S. history:
Indians, Mexicans or Japanese.

Attacks on free speech in order to accommodate multiculturalism
and diversity is really an attack on Western values that the university "enlightened" consider morally equivalent at best to other
values. But Western values are superior to all others. Why? The
indispensable achievement of the West was the concept of individual
rights. It is the idea that individuals have certain inalienable
rights and individuals do not exist to serve government but government exists to protect inalienable rights. It took until the 17th
century for that idea to arrive on the scene and mostly through the
works of English philosophers such as John Locke and David Hume.

While western values are superior to all others, one need not
be a westerner to hold Western values. A person can be Chinese,
Japanese, Jewish, African or Arab and hold Western values. It's no
accident that western values of reason and individual rights have
produced unprecedented health, life expectancy, wealth and comfort
for the ordinary person. There's an indisputable positive relationship between liberty and standards of living.

Western values are by no means secure. They are under ruthless
attack by the academic elite on college campuses across America.
These people want to replace personal liberty with government
control; they want to replace equality with entitlement; they want
to halt progress in the name of protecting the environment. As such
they pose a much greater threat to our way of life than any terrorist or rogue nation. Multiculturalism and diversity are a cancer on
our society and ironically, with our tax dollars and charitable
donations to universities, we're feeding it.